1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to magnetic separators for separating metallic materials from a product stream and, more particularly, to a magnetic separator system for separating metallic materials from non-metallic materials in a product stream.
2. Description of the Related Art
Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is processed today in various ways to extract valued materials for recycling, conversion to fuel to generate energy, and reduce the amount of materials going to landfill sites. The facilities conducting these processes are known as Material Recycling Facilities or MRFs. A growing practice within the MRF industry is to process MSW in what is called a “single stream” manner. In other words, all materials arrive to the MRF in a single stream as opposed to being pre-sorted curbside by material types such as glass, metals, plastics, etc.
Currently, the conventional method for creating this separation is done in a variety of ways including, but not limited to, magnetic separators, eddy current separators, and mechanical screeners. The current magnetic separation technology results in many of the non-metallic materials becoming entrapped with the metallic materials as the magnet captures and removes the metallic materials from the product stream. This results in only a partial separation that severely limits the value of the captured metallic materials and reduces the amount of non-metallic materials being recovered from the product stream. Moreover, the non-metallic materials typically possess a combustive quality that is reconfigured into a fuel source to produce energy to be used in a power generation plant.
Currently, recyclers typically process materials through a number of magnetic separators installed in sequence. As the materials pass through each magnet, the entrapped materials as a total percentage of the volume being magnetically separated is reduced. Depending on how “clean” the metallic materials need to be before they are deemed acceptable for recycling to the processor and/or depending on how much of the non-metallic materials need to be recovered for conversion to energy typically dictates how many magnets are used in the process. This can result in significant capital investment for magnetic equipment, a much larger footprint requirement for the process, and increased ongoing system maintenance costs of multiple magnetic equipment devices.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a system that employs a single device to effectively capture only the metallic materials in a production processing environment without retaining entrapping non-metallic materials. It is also desirable to provide a system that captures metallic materials for recycling without the need for additional magnetic equipment in sequence or other secondary processing. Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a magnetic separator system that meets at least one of these desires.